Rod Land is a one or simultaneous two-player platform game created by Jaleco and first distributed into arcades in 1990. In it you control one of two fairies – Tam or Rit – each armed with a magic wand (or a ‘rod’, as the game’s title implies) which can immobilise monsters that chase you on each stage. The aim of the game is to rescue your ‘mom’ (and later, your dad) who has been kidnapped and taken to the top of a large tower.
Tag Archives: Single-Player
Rollaround, Commodore 64
Rollaround is an isometric action/puzzle game written by Tony Kelly of Mr. Chip Software and was published by Mastertronic in 1987. The gameplay is a combination of Marble Madness, Bobby Bearing, Spindizzy and Q*Bert, where the aim is to control a rolling ball that moves around a map of screens, rolling over tiles, activating switches, and collecting cross tiles for points.
Venture, Arcade
Flimbo’s Quest, Commodore 64
Flimbo’s Quest is a scrolling platform shooter that basically recycles the gameplay from the classic C64 game, Hawkeye. Designer/programmer Laurens van der Donk was a member of demo scene coders Boys Without Brains (who created Hawkeye), which explains the connection. From what I can tell, though, van der Donk was not involved in creating Hawkeye, so I’m not entirely sure how or why Flimbo’s Quest came to be.
Marvel Land, Arcade
Marvel Land is a cute, colourful, scrolling platform arcade game, first released by Namco in 1990. The European version was called “Talmit’s Adventure“.
Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe, Amiga
Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe is the 1990 sequel to The Bitmap Brothers‘ Speedball. The game makes several changes to the original Speedball, but the main change is that teams now have nine players on-field (eight outfield players and a goalkeeper), instead of the previous five.
Speedball, Amiga
Developed by The Bitmap Brothers and published by Image Works in 1988, Speedball is a violent futuristic sport game where two teams try to score goals by throwing a metal ball into openings at the top and bottom of an enclosed court.
Mercenary: The Second City, ZX Spectrum
Mercenary: The Second City is an add-on for the classic game Mercenary that gives the player a new environment and new missions to solve. It was first released for the ZX Spectrum in 1988.
Mercenary, ZX Spectrum
Paul Woakes‘ classic open-world cockpit exploration game, Mercenary, was ported to the 48K ZX Spectrum by David Aubrey-Jones and published by Novagen Software in 1987.
Frenzy, Arcade
Frenzy is an arcade maze/shooter from 1982 that was developed and published by Stern Electronics. It is the sequel to the 1980 arcade game, Berzerk, and features similar presentation and gameplay.
The King of Grabs 